Cameroon-born Mbilli, who trains in Canada, was making the first defence of his WBC title after being elevated to champion in January.<\/p>\n
Alvarez, meanwhile, was competing for the first time without a world title to his name since 2015.<\/p>\n
Pundits had questioned whether Alvarez’s skills were declining following defeat by Crawford and over a year out of the ring, but his response was emphatic.<\/p>\n
Mbilli pressured Alvarez in the early stages, peppering him against the ropes, with the Mexican looking to land big counters.<\/p>\n
Alvarez responded by dismissively shaking his head to shrug off their impact, before goading Mbilli into attacking again.<\/p>\n
Although Mbilli was throwing more punches, it was Alvarez who was landing the harder shots, with a couple of big right uppercuts finding the mark in round six.<\/p>\n
The pattern continued in the next few rounds, with Alvarez countering the busy but largely ineffective Mbilli, before the defending champion was dealt a further blow by being docked a point for hits to the back of the head.<\/p>\n
From there Alvarez cruised to the finish line with Mbilli continuing to push forward but posing little threat to the Mexican.<\/p>\n
Alvarez’s defence and timing of punches was too slick throughout, and although Mbilli landed a couple of stinging right hands in the closing stages, it was in vain.<\/p>\n
Alvarez did not mention who he wants to fight next in his post-fight interview, but hinted at a quick return to training.<\/p>\n
“I’m going to rest. I’m going to keep learning. I’m going to keep working hard,” said Alvarez. <\/p>\n
“And right now I’m going to be a couple of weeks off and then come back.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cameroon-born Mbilli, who trains in Canada, was making the first defence of his WBC title after being elevated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":820397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-820396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}